Nomination Bio: Andrew Becraft

This is the last of five posts today about the 2008 LEGO Ambassadors nomination process.

In order to keep you better informed, we at The Brothers Brick will be bringing you brief biographies of the possible nominees for the Lego Ambassador representing our community. We will posting these as we receive the necessary information. The order is irrelevant. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Regardless of who is eventually chosen, the nominees will have to submit at least three testimonials from members of their community. In case you have forgotten, this means you! If you wish to write a testimonial regarding one of the possible nominees, please do so, as a comment, in the post under their name. Thank you for your support!

Possible Nominee: Andrew Becraft

After discovering LUGNET nearly ten years ago, Andrew lurked for a couple of years until he ran across FBTB, where he was a very active member for several years. Through FBTB, Andrew encountered other online forums, including Classic-Castle.com, Classic-Space.com, and Builders Lounge. Andrew has also been instrumental in growing the LEGO fan community on Flickr, through his photos, comments, generous favoriting, group invitations, and leadership during the “Brickshelf Crisis of 2007.”

However, the core of Andrew’s community-building centers around this blog. Starting as his personal blog, The Brothers Brick (TBB) has grown to become a six-contributor team blog that averages more than 40,000 visitors a month from 150 countries. Andrew has also used his Japanese language skills to bridge the Pan-Pacific gap with important info for Japanese fans and Japanese news for English-speaking LEGO fans.

TBB contributors scour the net for the latest LEGO creations and news, often leading to additional coverage for the creation or news item elsewhere on the net. Being featured on TBB has several times been the first step toward broader recognition from the “non-AFOL” world for a builder or their creation.

Andrew believes the LEGO Ambassador program has enormous potential, saying, “I’m aware of only a handful of other companies that show such clear commitment to incorporating the voice of fans like us into their corporate culture.” Andrew Becraft would be honored if you’d consider him as one of your representatives for the 2007-2008 LEGO Ambassador cycle.

Andrew is 33 and lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two adorable dogs.

11 comments on “Nomination Bio: Andrew Becraft”

Andrew is probably the greatest communicator in all of AFOLdom. His work on The Brother’s Brick has seen him spring from obscurity to being a fantastic mouthpiece for all in a very short period of time. While I could go on about Andrew’s interests, investment in the hobby etc. I think that the statement “I can think of absolutely no better candidate for LEGO Ambassador” sums up my thoughts quite nicely.

A couple years back I traveled the length of the American West Coast to attend my first ever Lego convention in Seattle, WA. It was only about a half hour from arriving that I happened to encounter a man wearing a black shirt with three words in plain white text across the chest: “I’m blogging this.”
“Ah,” I said to him, “You must be Andrew Becraft.”
Whether he is officially recognized or not, Andrew is a Lego Ambassador. Being an Ambassador shouldn’t be about who is the best builder out there, though that’s not to say that Andrew isn’t, it’s about communication – and when it comes to communication there’s no one better or more prevalent than Andrew. He’s a regular on almost every major community site out there. He speaks fluent Japanese and uses this skill to convey news and ideas between the Japanese and English speaking communities that otherwise would fall through the cracks. And then there is Andrew’s baby, the blog he created that is now a daily portal not just to the AFOL community but the internet as a whole.
To not include Andrew on the ambassador team I feel would be a great shame, and I hope that for as long as he’s willing to take on the responsibility he should be allowed to. As someone grateful for Andrew’s wide-scale contribution to the AFOL community, I fully endorse him as a 2008-2009 Lego Ambassador.

Andrew has made his mark on the LEGO fan base both in person and offline by doing what he does best, building community. Through his efforts on the popular The Brother’s Brick blog he has continually strived to unite the diverging interests of the online community in one place for all fans of LEGO to enjoy.

Flickr is one of the main places Andrew seems to draw from for material to feature on The Brothers Brick and his efforts have gone a long way to not only promote the online LEGO community but also the Flickr LEGO community – one the few places where enthusiasts of almost every LEGO theme have come together in the one place to call their home.

Andrew is also reknown for his love of the minifig and has become one of the most notable builders who specialise in just building minifigs. His involvement within the community is very broad, being a n active staff member of the Builders Lounge group and a member of the Classic Castle website, amongst others. Andrew is also a member of his local LUG and has attended events and displayed his work many times in public.

Andrew has a friendly and positive attitude and works hard to promote the hobby. Andrew has already proven himself to be a fantastic LEGO Ambassador, he has my full support.

Perhaps the first “personal” connection I made online after arising from my Dark Age, Andrew Becraft found (I guess) some of my Lego photos on Flickr and pointed me toward several of the different Lego groups at that site. That he took the time to include a re-emerging builder in the community is testimony to his fervor for Lego and the AFOL community. If this is the sort of thing that he does on a regular basis, then there is no person we want more for this position.

Andrew Becraft, who uses the nickname Dunechaser in on-line forums, is a prominent member of the LEGO community. He has been active on Classic-Castle for almost four years and is a great contributor to the conversation and the overall sense of camaraderie in our forum. I know that he is also a member of a number of other forums, such as FBTB and the Builders Lounge, as well as being an active participant in SEALUG and attending the NWBrickCon fests. He is also a current LEGO Ambassador.

Andrew’s primary field of building is minifigs. Unlike those who use paint, decals, cutting etc to create custom minifigs, Andrew is a purist who uses existing LEGO elements to create immediately recognizable characters from history, movies, literature, entertainment, etc. These, as well as other creations such as vigs and microscale MOCs, can be found on his Flickr and Brickshelf accounts:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=Dunechaser

Perhaps most importantly, though, is Andrew’s work in blogging. He started his own blog, Dunechaser’s Blocklog, back in July of 2005. It started out primarily to present his own minifig creations, then expanded to feature great minifig creations by others. A few months later he started another blog, Pan-Pacific Bricks, to focus on LEGO fans in Japan and other Asian nations. Since Andrew lived part of his life in Japan and speaks the language, he could form a bridge of sorts between the English-speaking online LEGO world and the Japanese-speaking LEGO world. This was a great help, because there was previously little contact between these two segments of our hobby – we’d see eachother’s creations on Brickshelf, but didn’t read eachother’s forums, and Andrew helped build in ties. Eventually Andrew’s two blogs got merged into the Brothers Brick, as he added partners and the focus grew to feature great LEGO creations from all themes and important news about our hobby. The Brothers Brick may well be the most recognized site among LEGO fans across themes and is a way we can keep in touch with different aspects of the hobby, especially since people have migrated away from a more central on-line site like Lugnet towards more theme or region specific forums like Classic Castle and Classic Space.

Andrew would be great in a continuing role as an Ambassador. He is well known and liked across the spectrum of LEGO fans and is great at tying the community together.

Andrew is prominent figure in the LEGO community, most noted for his contribution to establishing and running the most popular LEGO blog, the Brother’s Brick. Andrew visits many different LEGO communities, galleries, and forums each day to bring together the most interesting creations and important news to be featured on the blog. If there’s anyone you can count on to know what’s going on with anything LEGO related, then it’s Andrew Becraft. He truely embodies the community oriented value of a LEGO Ambassador and his previous experience in the program only serves to reinforce his qualification in the upcoming cycle. I wholeheartedly support Andrew to continue serving as a representative of our LEGO communities.

I will speak of why I personally think Andrew Becraft makes a good choice for Lego Ambassador. His Brother’s Brick Blog has opened up the wonderful world of AFOL’s to me. The exposure to all different builders, different discussions, different themes has turned me from a casual builder to a rabid enthusiast. In terms of an ambassador’s role to reach out and inform the larger Lego community, I can think of no one who has done a better job. And because of that, I would appreciate him continuing.

Andrew Becraft has served the LEGO community well by being active on TBB and also in SEALUG. He has recruited a number of ‘brothers’ (fellow LEGO enthusiasts) to assist and grow TBB, and has grown the site to become one of the best LEGO fan blogs in the world. It is in this course – of reaching out to the larger, non-AFOL community to share the joy of LEGO – that Andrew excels. He has also learned much about AFOL community-building while being in Cycle 5 of the LEGO Ambassadors program, and I can attest to his personal interest and passion for the brick. I fully support Andrew to a second term as a LEGO Ambassador.

Andrew is a ubiquitous presence in the LEGO fan world. While his building in recent years has largely been confined to small scenes and individual minifigs (Andrew has the astounding ability to bring nearly any historical figure to life in minifig form using only official parts), his reach to the worldwide LEGO community perhaps exceeds that of any other person. He founded The Brothers Brick, and has built it up to become the biggest LEGO blog on the web. The Brothers Brick tends to feature at least one, if not more, post by Andrew every day, and has garnered the attention of larger, more mainstream blogs such as Gizmodo and Neatorama. Andrew also seems to be an active member of just about every single online LEGO forum in existence (as well as places like Flickr). He has made significant efforts to expand the AFOL community’s influence and recognition in networking sites like Facebook, and in promoting LEGO conventions such as BrickCon.

In his individual communication with people, Andrew is engaging and friendly, and often has good advice for expert- and novice-builders alike. I have no doubt that he has proven himself well in the less-visible aspects of the ambassadorial duties as well. All told, I can think of few people better suited for the job and I recommend he be selected for another term as LEGO Ambassador.

I was introduced to Andrew in Walla Walla back in the mid 90’s. The topic of Legos came up in that brief meeting in the school cafeteria. At first, I thought he was just a casual Lego fan, like myself, until he asked me how I sorted my Legos. Here was someone with both the time to sort his Legos, and a collection requiring sorting. Then I knew I was dealing with someone serious about his Legos. No one else I knew at that time was devoted enough to the brick to even think about taking the time to sort pieces.

While Andrew and I did not interact much before or after that event, his regular blogging on the brothers-brick has shown that he is still devoted to Legos. His devotion allows those of us who are just casual Lego builders keep up to date on the latest building techniques and learn about upcoming Lego sets. That devotion leads me to recommend that Andrew Becraft serve another term as Lego Ambassador.